Agents took one 22-caliber rifle and two 22-caliber pistols from the home of Bennie Nephous Adams, 70, on the 700 block of Becky Lane in July while executing a search warrant, federal records show. They also took a three-ring notebook with “drawings and manufacturing specifications.”

No charges have been filed. Adams could not be reached for comment.

The son, Jesse Lieuallen, said he made the report to ATF because his father has been making untraceable fully-automatic machine guns for years. He also says his father has dementia and has threatened to shoot his brother.

Lieuallen said the Ellis County Sheriff’s Office wouldn’t do anything about it. He said he wants ATF to charge his father for illegally manufacturing the weapons.

Andrew Young, an ATF spokesman, said the matter is the subject of an ongoing investigation and that he could not comment.

Lieuallen told ATF in June that his father had a machine gun at his home and that he saw it a month before. But the search warrant did not indicate that agents found one there.

“He stated that he observed the weapon fire and that it would empty the magazine with one pull of the trigger,” a federal affidavit said. “Mr. Lieuallen stated that the firearm would fire one hundred rounds in five seconds.”

Lieuallen told me that his father is a former machinist who learned how to make guns after working in a machine shop since he was a kid. He said his father has been making the guns at home since the 1980s. He said they look like “little Tommy guns.”

“He manufactures them. There’s no telling where they went. He’s made several trips to Belize,” Lieuallen said. “He’s got to be selling them.

ATF’s web site says people not licensed to make firearms may do so as long as they don’t sell them and they are not prohibited from possessing firearms. But they cannot make a “non-sporting semi-automatic rifle or non-sporting shotgun from imported parts.”

Also, the Gun Control Act requires that the gun manufacturer pay a tax and seek approval from ATF.

“An application to make a machine gun will not be approved unless documentation is submitted showing that the firearm is being made for a Federal or State agency,” the ATF web site says.